[Continues the comments exchange in the previous post on this blog...]
But why wait so long? Why wait 50 years to get where we are? If the West has incompetently fucked up every other place they have justifiably intervened in, why the extreme care and caution with Syria?
They threw the towel with Egypt, but they held their ground with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (because of oil)... But Syria? A vulgar little tyranny whose army is largely untested (unlike the Iraqi army after a long war with Iran), whose population is less likely to break apart along sectarian lines than Iraq did, and whose people are just as eager to get rid of their dictator, etc...
Syria used to be backed by the Soviets. So we were careful. But no more.
Syria might have some missiles, but is nowhere near the threat that a hostile Egypt could pose to Israel.
Syria is the only obstacle to peace in Palestine-Israel. Iran is too geographically removed from the Palestinian-Israeli arena to pose an immediate threat, unless, as is currently the case, it is given the bridge, the link the Syria provides, to proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Syria is a major violator of human rights. It sits right next door to a future European Union that includes Turkey.
All these factors ought to make dealing with Syria a priority. But the dereliction of the West in addressing the Syrian cancer all those decades, allowed the metastasis of Hezbollah and Hamas, and provided an apparently successful anti-western model to all the Al-Qaedas and its offshoots around the world...
Up to the early to mid-1980s, Syria did use the PLO, then the Lebanese Muslim militias, as proxies, but was otherwise directly involved. Since the mid-1980s, it delegated all its sinister operations to the nascent Hezbollah, Amal, Hamas, anti-peace Palestinians etc... Thus claiming deniability...
But before Syria succeeded in doing this, it had evicted the West from Lebanon, weakened the pro-Western Christians there, and ushered a Muslim-dominated Lebanon. All with Western endorsement and direct support to the Syrian regime.
WHY? What is West afraid of in confronting Syria? What is the West afraid of in breaking the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah chain by eliminating the Syrian link in the middle?
What is there to fear in a fucked up third-world little tyranny called Syria? No nuclear weapons... no major army.... no contiguous borders with a country that is likely to help Syria in case of a confrontation (Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon... ).
Why did the US all those decades give Syria what it wanted in Lebanon? From George Bush Senior and his Jim Baker, Ed Djeredjian, Richard Murphy, all Assad ass-kissers and ass-lickers... killing any uprising by the Lebanese against Syria during 3o years of occupation.
WHY?
Why was nothing ever done?
What are they still waiting for?
If Israel's security is the ultimate objective of the US, then the Syrian regime holds a card that Israel and the West want, and which only the Assad regime is able to give. And that is why the US and the West in general have been so willing to allow the Assads to get away with murder, brutality, dictatorship, sponsoring terrorist organizations, derailing time and again the peace process, etc....
My guess is that the reward from a collaboration with Syria must be bigger than the risks entailed with allowing Syria to get away with murder. What is this reward?
Israel wants nothing more than take over the entire West Bank and eliminate once and for all any Palestinian existence in Judea and Samaria. This is the long term objective of Israel, and this cannot be denied. The trajectory of Israel's policies since the 1960s has been a straight line: Gobble up land, make Palestinian life miserable, delay ad infinitum any settlement with the PLO, build settlements, increase the Jewish population, etc.....
Why should this trajectory suddenly make a turn towards conciliation, surrender of land, etc...? It is not going to happen. Israel's surrender of Gaza is a tactical move aiming at exactly what is happening now: Show that the Palestinians are unreliable, cannot be trusted, etc... and therefore keep delaying and creating pretexts and facts on the ground that will one day make any negotiation really useless and moot. Another 20 years and the Jewish population of the West Bank will be equal to the Palestinian population. What sovereignty will the Palestinians then claim? What grounds will they have for a separate state?
The Syrian regime must be a part of this long term plan. It must have promised at some point to deliver the Palestinians and the Lebanese, in exchange for Golan and Lebanon... So you are right.
Hanibaal
8 comments:
Why should this trajectory suddenly make a turn towards conciliation, surrender of land, etc...? It is not going to happen. Israel's surrender of Gaza is a tactical move aiming at exactly what is happening now: Show that the Palestinians are unreliable, cannot be trusted, etc... and therefore keep delaying and creating pretexts and facts on the ground that will one day make any negotiation really useless and moot."
Well, it happened three times before (Sini, south Lebanon, and Gaza, in two of which Israel has also evacuated civilians). You may speculate that in Gaza the evacuation was just a maneuver to prove that the Palestinians cannot be trusted with the WB, but even if so - it has exposed nothing but the reality. The bottom line is, that Israel has sacrificed quite a lot for peace, while the Palestinians prove once and again that they are not ready for peace (electing Hamas, Fatach's insistence on the "right to return", inventing new pre-conditions before every round of peace talks, etc.)
"Another 20 years and the Jewish population of the West Bank will be equal to the Palestinian population. What sovereignty will the Palestinians then claim? What grounds will they have for a separate state?"
I don't know about any such estimation. As much as the Israelis try, the demographic trends clearly show the opposite of your claim. If anything, demography is one of the strongest arguments why should Israel withdraw from the WB.
"The Syrian regime must be a part of this long term plan. It must have promised at some point to deliver the Palestinians and the Lebanese, in exchange for Golan and Lebanon... So you are right."
Something is indeed clearly wrong with the west attitude toward Syria. Nevertheless, I was not convinced by your western conspiracy theory. Not because I attribute such high moral standards to the west, but simply because I think it is a bad strategy and that the western strategy planners are aware of that. In our days, everything is eventually exposed, and the damage of revealing such plans is extremely dangerous and doesn't worth the gain. My personal guess is that Russia or China (or both) are involved, and that they hold some cards to assure that the US would not intervene in Syria. These are of course the immediate suspects, and it is possible (and likely) that things are more complex.
I've found your arguments up to the middle quite logical, but I think there are some flaws from the point that you start concluding, based on the evidences you discuss.
"Israel wants nothing more than take over the entire West Bank and eliminate once and for all any Palestinian existence in Judea and Samaria. This is the long term objective of Israel, and this cannot be denied."
While there are some dominant groups in Israel who indeed support this line, the idea of making a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank is at least as dominant in Israel, if not more. This can be verified by the stated agendas of the democratically elected Israeli governments along all years. Even now, when Israel has the most right-wing government ever, all three major parties in this government say that they support the two state solution. You might question if they really mean that, but regardless of what political games the heads of these parties play, recall that they were elected on bases of their published agenda. Most Israelis understand that regardless if they like it or not, keeping control over the WB is just infeasible.
"The trajectory of Israel's policies since the 1960s has been a straight line: Gobble up land, make Palestinian life miserable, delay ad infinitum any settlement with the PLO, build settlements, increase the Jewish population, etc....."
"Gobble up land" - happens exactly ONCE in 67 - you cannot argue that this is an ongoing policy (in south Lebanon, Israel did not annexed the land but just kept a military control). Most of that land was returned (Sini to Egypt).
"make Palestinian life miserable" - certainly not a policy. Before the Intifada of 87, the situation for Palestinians in Gaza and the WB was much better than that of their borders in Jordan and Lebanon (not to mention Palestinians who leaved within Israel). The Palestinians themselves, by applying violence and terror, contributed much to the fact that their situation has deteriorated to where it is today. I'm not sure by the way that the average income and facilities for the WB residences is inferior with respect to Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.
(continue in the next post…)
Sorry, the order of your comments was reversed.
Still, I am not convinced either with your (much regurgitate) arguments. In fact, we used to believe Israel's point of view and arguments... but after 40-50 years of arguments while actions on the ground kept proving otherwise, even the faithful lose faith.
For one, just recently, why did Netanyahu push forward on the settlement freeze, despite objections and despite the wedge that Israel succeeded in driving between Hamas and Fatah? Why? Why push Abbas back into the lap of Hamas? What strategic purpose did that serve? None, other than further eroding any future sovereignty that a Palestinian State might claim in the West Bank? Why the constant evictions of old Palestinian families from East Jerusalem on such technicalities as improper construction permits and the like? Any sane person would have at some point to question the motives of the Israelis, which for lack of other explanation, is to gobble up more land. You might say that this is to be able to negotiate later from a position of strength, but where does one draw the line between gaining 1) tactical advantage, 2) irreversibly screwing your future peace partner, and 3) actually living up to the annexationist strategy of Zionism from the beginning.
Second, and this is closer to my own issue of Lebanon, since ultimately I could not care less about Israel or the Palestinians or any other primitive peoples from biblical times who still commit mass murder in the name of religion, or God's promises, or such hallucinations from the Stone Age.... But be that as it may, let me ask you about how has ISrael handled Syria all those decades.
Israel has attacked Syria - despite all the problems that Syria was creating in Lebanon, in Palestine, and indeed around the world.... despite the existential threat that a Syrian-Iranian alliance has posed to ISrael...despite everything I enumerated in my original post... - Israel has attacked Syria twice since 1974. That mysterious ghost "training camp" in circa 2008, and then that other mysterious "nuclear site" around the same time.
Now, you'd think that the monumental threat posed to Israel by Hezbollah, by a potential nuclear Syria, by all the instability in the Lebanese south, that Israel would have been more "hostile" to the Syrian regime. But the fact is that Israel and Syria have always had tacit and implicit and complicit agreements in Lebanon and elsewhere, they have had red lines agreed upon with the blessing of the Americans, they have been chummy all along , meeting and negotiating on and off.... But never did ISrael make any move to make Syria feel any fear at continuing its undermining and destabilization of the area. Not once. On the other hand, Israel have bombed Lebanon to smithereens numerous times, has invaded Lebanon several times, continues to have military solutions when it comes to Lebanon, all the while knowing that the problems Israel had in Lebanon were made in Syria. Why has Israel never attacked or threatened the source of those problems, and instead blaming the victims (the Lebanese) of a Syrian occupation that Israel and the US tolerated form 35 years under the pretext that it stabilized Lebanon?
Unless you have some explanation to this strange behavior by Israel vis-a-vis Syria for close to 4 decades, there isn't much I can do with the expressions of good intentions and peace-loving policies that you and Israel keep marketing to the Lebanese and the rest of the world. All I have left is that Israel must be in bed with Syria for some long term objective whose features are beginning to come together.
Despite my abhorrence of conspiracy theories, this one provides the only valid explanation: Lebanon is the final dumping ground for the unwanted Palestinians; Lebanon is the substitute Palestine; Lebanon will free Israel from responsibility to the Right-of-Return"... And Syria has helped Israel achieve this objective.
Hanibaal
Sorry, but the order of your comments above was reversed.
Still, I am not convinced either with your (much regurgitated) arguments. In fact, we used to believe Israel's point of view and arguments... but after 40-50 years of arguments while actions on the ground kept proving otherwise, even the faithful lose faith.
For one, just recently, why did Netanyahu push forward on the settlement freeze, despite objections and despite the wedge that Israel succeeded in driving between Hamas and Fatah? Why? Why push Abbas back into the lap of Hamas? What strategic purpose did that serve? None, other than further eroding any future sovereignty that a Palestinian State might claim in the West Bank? Why the constant evictions of old Palestinian families from East Jerusalem on such technicalities as improper construction permits and the like? Any sane person would have at some point to question the motives of the Israelis, which for lack of other explanation, are to gobble up more land. You might say that this is to enable it to negotiate later from a position of strength, but where does one draw the line between 1) gaining a tactical advantage, 2) irreversibly screwing your peace partner, and 3) actually living up to the annexationist strategy of Zionism from the beginning.
Second, and this is closer to my own issue of Lebanon, since ultimately I could not care less about Israel or the Palestinians or any other primitive peoples from biblical times who still commit mass murder in the name of religion, or God's promises, or such hallucinations from the Stone Age.... But be that as it may, let me ask you about how has Israel handled Syria all those decades.
Israel has attacked Syria - despite all the problems that Syria was creating in Lebanon, in Palestine, and indeed around the world.... despite the existential threat that a Syrian-Iranian alliance has posed to Israel...despite everything I enumerated in my original post... - Israel has attacked Syria only twice since 1974. That mysterious ghost "training camp" in circa 2008, and then that other mysterious "nuclear site" around the same time. And Syria did not even bother to respond, other than bark a little. You'd think that a hostile act of war like this between two "enemies" would inflame the region. But no... civility is the norm between the Baathists and the Zionists.
(Continues in next comment)
Hanibaal
Part 2...
Now, you'd think that the monumental threat posed to Israel by Hezbollah, by a potential nuclear Syria, by all the instability in the Lebanese south, that Israel would have been more "hostile" to the Syrian regime. But the fact is that Israel and Syria have always had tacit and implicit and complicit agreements in Lebanon and elsewhere, they have had red lines agreed upon with the blessing of the Americans, they have been chummy all along , meeting and negotiating on and off.... But never did Israel ever make any move to make Syria feel any fear at continuing its undermining and destabilization of the area? Not once. On the other hand, Israel has bombed Lebanon to smithereens numerous times, has invaded Lebanon several times, continues to have military solutions when it comes to Lebanon, all the while knowing that the problems Israel had in Lebanon were made in Syria. Why has Israel never attacked or threatened the source of those problems, and instead continued to blame the victims (the Lebanese) of a Syrian occupation that Israel and the US tolerated form 35 years under the pretext that it stabilized Lebanon?
Why, in fact, has Syria never allowed a "resistance" against Israel along its own ANNEXED (not just occupied - annexed) Golan Heights?
Unless you have some explanation to this strange behavior by Israel vis-a-vis Syria for close to 4 decades, there isn't much I can do with your expressions of peace-loving good intentions that Israel may have and which it keeps marketing to credulous folks around the globe. All I have left is that Israel must be in cahoots with Syria for some long term objective whose features are beginning to come together.
Despite my abhorrence of conspiracy theories, this one provides the only valid explanation: Lebanon is the final dumping ground for the unwanted Palestinians; Lebanon is the substitute Palestine; Lebanon will free Israel from responsibility to the Right-of-Return"... And Syria has helped Israel achieve this objective.
Hanibaal
I admit that I'm probably biased here, being an Israeli, but nevertheless I try to approach these issues on bases of evidences (no need in superlatives such as "regurgitated" etc. – it does not contribute anything to establish the validity of your claims or the falseness of mine). Of course, one's affiliation impacts the weigh and interpretation he gives to these evidences.
That being said, about your theory that there is some plan to transfer the Palestinians to Lebanon – sorry, I just don't see any evidences for this. Your circumstantial assumption that this is the reason for the relatively calmness in the relations between Syria and Israel is an interesting hypothesis, but still not sufficiently convincing. What do the Syrians gain from this? How does this align with their relations with Iran and Hezbollah, and their interest in Lebanon? How will it become "legitimate" in public opinion, if no one applies a corresponding propaganda?
You ask why Israel attacked in Lebanon but not in Syria. You would probably dismiss my suggested answer, but I'll write it anyway. Despite how people try to depict it, Israel DOES NOT try to engage in wars. In the two invasions of Israel into Lebanon, the real reason (don't laugh!) was to retaliate and eliminate concrete terror actions that were launched into Israel from south Lebanon (by the PLO in the late seventies and the Hezbollah five years ago). Should Israel have attacked Syria Instead? Maybe, but it is not that clear that this would have led to a better situation for Israel. There is much internal criticism in Israel regarding the invasion of the 80's, and the fact that Israel has kept its army in Lebanon till 2000, but it is hard to tell what would have happened if Israel attacked Syria. The fact is that after Israel's withdrawal, Hezbollah gained much power, which eventually led to the 2006 war (and its current hijack of the Lebanese government).
As for the WB settlements, as you said, I also believe that Netanyahu's policy is not innocent. Nevertheless, I disagree with the extent of importance that people try to attach to this issue. This is not what holds back the peace process. If that was the only reason, then the Palestinians should have tried to make a deal as soon as possible, reducing the effect of this move as much as possible. Again, I do think that Israel plans to use the settlements as a currency in a future agreement, which will probably include bilateral population exchange. I'm not justifying this action, but I think this is what it is. About that line between tactical advantage/irreversibly screwing your peace partner/annexationist, we can only speculate given the known history and the estimated future. History – Israel has evacuated significant amounts of civilians twice before. No such a dramatic move was ever done by any of the neighbors of Israel in order to promote peace (actually, I can’t think of ANY concession made by the Arabs toward Israel along the years. The Palestinians are not even willing to accept Israel as the state of the Jewish people – probably the only demand that Israel has from them, besides renouncing the violence). Future – given the USA, EU and Israel's own mainstream public opinion, annexation looks unlikely. I can't really see how Israel pulls off annexation of the WB in means of extending the settlements – there are 1-2 millions of Palestinians living there, and the settlements, as big as they get, would not change this fact.
Moonchild (forgot to sign my previous posts)
While I generally agree with Israel's justifications for invading Lebanon - both the PLO and Hezbollah have - against Lebanese public opinion and the will of the vast majority of the Lebanese - given Israel every pretext to attack and counter-attack, you hit it on the nail when you said something to the effect that "No one knows what would have happened had Israel attacked Syria" in all these opportunities that presented themselves to cut the head of the snake, rather than keep beating on its tail.
That is the crux of my argument. Imagine for a second that at any point in the past 30 years - or even now - with Egypt, Jordan and the PLO mostly lined up behind a permanent peace with Israel; with Syria no longer back by the Soviets; with Syria as weak as it ever was.... etc, imagine if Israel has mounted a significant show of force by bombing Damascus, by bombing every air base in Syria, by crippling Syria's pathetic army... by bombing the Assad's foci of power and visible authority.... Especially in the early 1990s when Syria was at its weakest.... what would have happened?
Syria - now alone - without any threat from the other Arabs, without any threat from an Islamic Republic still in its infancy and crippled by its long war with Iraq.... Syria would have crawled on its knees seeking an end to the hostilities, Syria would have been forced out of Lebanon, and Syria would have signed a peace treaty, followed by Lebanon, and the whole masquerade would have been over.
Yes, indeed, no one knows in hindsight - nor in foresight - but the point is that the path chosen by Israel was the most cumbersome, the most high risk, and in particular the most certain path to the long winding endless cumulatively complicated conflict that we have today.
One wonders if this was not done on purpose... A little sacrifice now for a big payoff later....Only time will tell.
When I think of Israel, I often go back to the precedent of the Crusades. They came, stayed 200 years, and were eventually driven out because they never made any friends in the neighborhood. Many of the Lebanese actually loved the Crusaders and became their allies, and many Lebanese, believe or not, sympathize with the Israelis. But if the Israelis persist in making enemies of everyone around, even among those who are most likely to be their friends, they will have no one left when the time comes.
There is something insidiously dirty in Israel's dealings with the Lebanese-Syrian-Palestinian triangle that does not bode well for the future, and overall, I am, reluctantly, very pessimistic as to the future of Israel.
When I go to the history of my country, long before Israel came into existence, we were the "Question d'Orient". Lebanon - not Palestine or Israel - was the problem of the Middle East. And we have failed. We lost our independence, we lost our demographic advantage, we lost every war we fought because we made too many mistakes and the West has abandoned us. The question is: What will Israel do?
Hanibaal
Israel is surrounded by tribes from the stone age, provided by Iran and Syria. Tribes that torture and abuse children in the name of Allah or some law called emergency law. Tribes that will stone women in so called honor killings. When those tribes realize their true enemy they will learn peace. Islam is the religion of invasion and taking of land, they hate the Israelis, because they can not break them down and make them say "la elah ellah allah wa mohamad rasoul allah". How do you make peace with tribes from the stone age. I don't see how Hezbollah wants peace with Israel! Nasrallah was willing to destroy the entire country of Lebanon, and turn it into miniIran, while fighting the Israeli army with sling shots. Do you think Hamas want peace. How can drug, arms, human dealers know what peace is?
Israel is the cause of such tribes, because diplomatic ways failed to bring a fair peace deal. Just look what happens to the peaceful flotillas. The Israelis go in like savages and attack the diplomats as usual.
Every time there are peaceful means for a negotiation, Israel shoots it down, much worse than the Syrian Police. Peace at the moment is a losing business for Israel.
Peace equals less land for Israel period.
Israel is proving day by day that peace is not achievable, but that is the strategy of Israel. In my opinion there will never be peace.
Israel wants to classify an entire region as unfit for peace, meaning a land filled with terrorists. Then the west will give Israel the green light to bomb it and capture it. Iran and Syria are providing such terrorists for the Israeli cause.
Dear Israeli: you can thank Iran for that. Iran is providing you with a country, stolen from Terrorists, enjoy it!
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